How are you pronounced?

I have been reading Joan Didion's Blue Nights and among the many, many thoughts that curl around me as I read, ponder, imagine is her reference to Ntozake Shange. I know that name. Have I read her book, her poems?

Medical alert: my brain has been on vacation, pining for estrogen, low in neuroplasticity, a term used first by the Polish neuroscientist Jersy Konorski -- not the writer Jerzy Kozinski, although pronouncing either name is vaguely orgasmic. I Google "Shange," learn how to pronounce "en-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHN-gay." Say that, enjoy the pleasure: "en-toh-ZAH-kee." Makes you want to change your name, does it not? To have a name that sings itself?

I changed my name when I was 34 years old and completely divorced. Completely, that is, compared to kind of separated (still living together), formally separated (living apart), legally separated (paying money to a lawyer, signing a piece of paper, counting months until divorce). That was in the gray ages when someone had to be at fault. I wanted to leave, so I accepted the charge: Mental Cruelty. Say that, lips pressed, breath expelled, a pout, tongue to teeth, "Men... tull... crew... ull... tee!" Say "Mary." Say "Marry." "Mary does not want to stay Mary-ied."

Over a Sunday morning plate full of tidbits from Frisch's breakfast buffet in Cincinnati, Ohio, I announced to my lover, Len, that I must change my name. When he asked what name I was considering, I said "Vladimir Shostakovitz." A whole alphabet of mouth play.

Ntozake knew that "Paulette L. Williams" was not a name that was going anywhere. I knew the name "Mary Schwab" could not hold the woman I would become. I wished to break completely, dump the "Mary" as well as the "Schwab." But I was drifting without the tether I'd been taught to desire -- life as a wife -- and needed something familiar in the lone container of my self. Though I longed to be a "Maya" or a "Simone" or even an "Ntozake," I kept "Mary" for safety, for assurance, and looked to goddesses for the unexpected.

Everyone loves Athena; everyone knows Diana. More private, a quiet healer, the goddess I chose was known for protecting her believers from evil spirits. By the time she reached the Greeks she was the cat-goddess.

Still worshiped today (see per.Bast.org), her name creates a yearning.

Say "Buh." Breathe "ahh." Push your teeth with "sss." Then tongue it: "tuh."

"Buhahhssstuh."

Unfamiliar Territory

(Continued from Land of the Birds)

Thursday, July 7, 1988:

Nikki and I awoke early in Rarotonga yesterday from anxious dreams about being in unfamiliar territory. After two weeks on the island of Atiu we'll probably come back to the "civilized" world and wonder why we do all the things we do. But in these early days we'll have to adapt to a simpler life. Few Atiuan homes have running water, for example. Instead, most collect rain water. Becky says "When it's time to wash up you'll take a pitcher and basin to the bath house. Do it the way birds do."

In Atiu's traditional Christian culture, women are expected to dress modestly. Bathing suits, short shorts, or low-cut tops are not acceptable, although families may have different standards for attire in the privacy of their homes. For swimming and as a cover-up at home, Nikki and I each bought a pareu (sarong), two yards of cloth to wrap around the body in various ways. We chose the same dark blue and green on white pattern.

I'm now sitting in bed in my small room in Atiu at 5:15 a.m. The canopy is made of white lace, and a gentle cross-breeze flows from the window to the open hall in the middle of the house on this hot, muggy morning. I'm glad I brought a battery-operated book light, because electricity on the island is turned off between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Washing up was easier than I expected because the collected rainwater flows from a spigot in the bath house. Before "doing as the birds do" last night, I brushed my teeth and rinsed the brush in my bath water  I was a bit nervous using the outdoor toilet in the dark, but found it flushes with only a little help from a bucket of water kept at the door of the outhouse.

So much is new, some expected because of our briefings, some surprising. It's certainly true, as we've been told by many people, that families here are wonderfully generous and caring. I have the good fortune to live at the home of the mayor, called Papa Tu by everyone because of his position in the village, and his wife Teu Mere, or Mere for short -- a name pronounced like mine: Mare-Ray, though I'm to call her "Mama."

Mama (Mere) on the right, in blue

As promised, our plane (one of two) was met yesterday by our host families and we were draped with eis (called leis in Hawaii) and our hair bedecked with garlands of flowers. I went with Mama right away to our home, where she served me fresh coconut milk (in a coconut), and two kinds of coconut meat: the nutty, mature meat and the immature flesh of the sprouting coconut -- fluffy, juicy, and very tender, similar in flavor but more delicate. 

After the second plane arrived, we were all taken to two umukai's (feasts), the first an official greeting by Papa Tu and the head ariki (chieftain). Because it's customary for guests to eat first, our hosts did not join us in this feast of passion fruit juice, chicken, bananas, cookies, marinated squash, and a staple of the island called taro. This bland-tasting root looks somewhat like a sweet potato, although it can be grey or white or pink. Papa Tu says the color varies by where it's grown and how much moisture surrounds it.

The second umukai followed a brief religious ceremony at the Sunday School. Papa Tu, who is also the assistant minister, introduced the minister -- a younger, quite heavy man with a booming voice, who gave a sermon on love. I taped the traditional hymn which was sung in Maori, eerie and beautiful, all the voices clear and joyful.

My island family is highly religious. Yesterday evening, after I was shown to the bath house and we had coffee, tea, and more taro with butter, some of the children and Mama's sister Rongo came in for evening devotion. Papa Tu played the guitar while all sang a folk hymn in a combination of Maori and English. Mama and the children alternated reading verses from the Bible in Maori. In my honor, Papa Tu read in English. Then we had a closing prayer.

Papa Tu and Mere have raised 21 children; only the two youngest boys still at home. Newton is 10 years old and very handsome, named after the town in New Zealand where five of their children lived at one time. Another son lives in the next village because he has a girlfriend there. I asked if they are married, and Papa Tu said, "Not yet. It is better that they know each other first, so they don't divorce right away, as so many have done." This son and his girlfriend have a two-year-old boy.

Papa Tu is very proud of his family, especially his oldest brother, who has passed away. In their inside sitting room are photographs on the walls, decorated with shell necklaces. This brother's picture is displayed prominently next to one of Papa Tu when he was younger. This oldest brother, Vainerere Tangatapoto, was Becky Stephenson's "Papa" on the island -- the one she lived with for a year and a half thirteen years ago while collecting data for her dissertation in anthropology. Papa says his brother loved Becky like a daughter and she loved him like a father.

Clearly, Papa Tu's favorite son is his namesake, who lives in New Zealand and is very much missed. Papa recalls with great tenderness Teio Tu's helpfulness as a boy. Mama says Teio Tu helped Papa put up the kitchen ceiling when he was only 12 years old.

There are other children about, mostly nieces, and one granddaughter. Of one of the nieces, Tau, Papa Tu says her parents are "not good." These relatives of Mama's, he said, drink a lot and go away at night with their "gang," leaving the children unattended.

Humor is a big part of their lives. Papa Tu teased Mama that only her relatives are bad. Even his nephew joked with Papa at the feast last night, saying everyone hoped Papa would keep his speech short.

Mama speaks English quite well, though not as fluently as Papa. This is, I suspect, partly due to personality, and partly to roles. Papa Tu does most of the talking and he's the one who decides what's appropriate behavior for me. Mama is present, adding comments or laughing.

In this morning's briefing we were asked to describe to the Earthwatch group what we've observed so far, and I found myself tongue-tied, trying to share how open my family has been and how touched I am by their stability and spiritual depth. Though many described themselves as happy with their families, I believe I'm the luckiest to be with mine. I'm interested in the island's history and traditions, and my family holds to most of the historical culture. Nikki is with a "modern" family -- they watch TV (VCR) till midnight, drink Diet Pepsi, and eat mostly tinned food. I'm sure her "Mama" believes she is serving her guest especially well, but Nikki isn't experiencing the old ways of the islanders. There was much laughter in my family, for example, when Mama dressed me in this traditional costume.

(to be continued)

Pure Prairie League

It's 1973. I'm 35 years old, here at the communal Dana House with Lou, 11 years younger. We're sitting around the huge kitchen table with ten or so others, passing around a bottle of tequila, a plate of lemon wedges, a shaker of salt.

Earlier we listened to Pure Prairie League, in person, in the living room where they started several years ago, before they and "Amie" became nationally known. Some of them are at the table with us, but I don't know their names. All I know is that this is SO MUCH FUN!

When the tequila runs out we'll begin passing around joints. At some point I will go to the bathroom to take out my contact lenses and drop one on the floor. Then I'll weep, not because I can't find the contact lens but because I think it must be so lonely all alone down there.

The music will start again and I'll go upstairs with Lou until late tomorrow morning, certain that even though we're on a residential street in Cincinnati, Ohio, we're somewhere near the ocean, because I'm floating on its waves and (you can start the music now) singing "I can see why you think you belong to me..."

New Rules for the Game

I was taught my manners by a Southern mother, so when first introduced to feminism in graduate school, I shied away from it. “Nice Girl” played well with my professors and for me, too, as I received the kudos, scholarships, and fellowships that reward students who play the game. But slowly, slowly I felt my soul shrinking and began to bristle at the arbitrary power of academic faculty. My first effort was quiet and passive-aggressive—an article for a sociology newsletter that subtly mocked the pervasive use of the phrase “seminal idea” in (male-dominated) academic circles, as compared to the promise of “generative ideas” and the “birth” of new ways of thinking.

Then the two instructors leading my psychology practicum, both tenured faculty, both male, asked the twelve of us in the group to rank each other on a variety of dimensions. They said the questionnaire results would be confidential, a learning tool for our personal growth. Instead, they used the data to rank order us and sent that ranking to our advisers! I was horrified. As the oldest (I was 31 when I entered graduate school) and top-ranked, I thought if anyone's voice would be heard it would be mine (who'd listen to the lowest-ranked?) I sent a letter to those same advisers, signed by my classmates, protesting the misuse of the information and emphasizing that in a group of top performers even the lowest-ranked was still a top performer.

Did those two professors take me seriously? Did they in any way acknowledge a misuse of their power? No, they diminished my efforts by broadcasting my “problem with authority.” If you’ve experienced an “–ism” you’ll recognize the tactic—you stand up to those who've demeaned or bullied you, and they say, “You’re too sensitive.”

They did me a favor, though, because I realized I'd have to stand up for myself. I found it especially difficult to hold firm when someone on my dissertation committee asked for changes that seemed arbitrary to me. So I formed a dissertation support group. There were four of us struggling, not with the research and writing, but with the interpersonal and political dynamics of the academic system. Not only did we critique each others' thinking and writing, we rehearsed what we'd say when defending our ideas.

Then I met with my committee to review what I considered to be my completed dissertation. Out of the blue, two of them said it was too long and needed to be rewritten. One more hoop to jump through? No. Having rehearsed this possibility with my support group, I asked for specific examples and when they had none said, with rising excitement at my own daring, “I’ll be happy to consider specific suggestions; otherwise, what you have in front of you is my best effort.” 

They accepted it. 

Lesson learned.

 

A Long Way Down

Ray was taller than I expected from the photos on his book covers, and thinner. He looked me over, too, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I made small talk while we waited for my luggage, but he was silent.

When we were finally in his truck heading to Whitefish, he cleared his throat. "Well, you've had quite a day, Mary. Twelve hours, three planes. You must be tired."

Read more at Connotation Press...

My Spirit Animal

In my thirties, my friend Bob returned from an Omega Institute Spirit Quest workshop, eager to show me how to connect with my totem animal. I hoped for a rare and swift creature -- a gazelle, perhaps.

We turned the lights low in my living room, and I lay within a circle Bob created by walking around me with burning sage, gently spreading the smoke with his hands.

In a quiet, hypnotic voice he said, "Close your eyes, breathe deeply and slowly, in and out, letting go of all thoughts, all ego desires. Release any expectations of what you might find on your journey."

When I signaled my readiness, Bob said, "Picture a body of water with a densely grown bit of land in the middle. Now notice there's a rowboat waiting for you on shore. Step into the boat, row to the island, where you will find many animals. As you roam the landscape, one of the animals will speak to you. Be open to the message you're given, then thank your animal spirit guide for the lesson and come back to shore."

I saw the body of water, the island, and the rowboat, but there was already a creature in the boat. It was Babar, the children's storybook elephant. With the spats, the bow tie, and the stupid little hat.

I stepped into the rowboat and said, "No, no. Get out of the boat! I want to go to the island. I want a sleek and beautiful animal. I don't want you!"

Babar smiled in that innocent way of his and said, "We can row to the island if you wish, and you can walk among the other creatures, but none of them will talk to you. I'm your spirit guide."

God, he was so prissy. The last thing I would have imagined is being irritated on a quest for a spirit animal. I remembered Bob's advice to be open to whatever happened, but I felt certain Babar was a trick of my imagination, a joke my psyche was playing on me. I insisted on rowing to the island. Babar very politely agreed but refused to leave the boat. He didn't help with the rowing, either.

Rousseau's Equatorial Jungle

On the island, I walked through a Rousseau-like jungle among strange flowers, exotic birds, curious apes, hungry lions, and fierce tigers. None of these fascinating creatures showed the slightest interest in me. I knew I couldn't choose my spirit animal. Even so, I tried to entice a sleek panther to speak to me of lunar power, of death and rebirth, of the gift of shape-shifting. She held me in her unblinking stare, silent.

Babar's take on Henri Rousseau

Babar relaxed and waited. Finally I saw the truth of the situation, how my desire to control the quest could only be upended by a surprising image I could not deny.

"Babar," I said, laughing. "What are you here to teach me?"

This is what he said: Go to this link and click for Babar's response.

I thanked him for the lesson and rowed back to shore.

Later, I learned that elephants bestow the ability to have great impact though saying little, to command a situation simply by being.

Land of the Birds

Early in 1988 the corporation I worked for was acquired in a hostile takeover and my department eliminated. My March 50th birthday put me in a "protected" category that increased the size of my severance check, and I found consulting work one week a month for as much income as I'd been making in a full-time job. Suddenly free of traditional work hours and in the money, I could do something I'd been interested in for a long time -- join an Earthwatch expedition.

Though tempted by Tracking Orangutans in Borneo (more about this later), I was most intrigued by an archeology/anthropology expedition to Atiu Island (or Enuamanu, land of the birds) in the Cooks. My friend Nikki joined me. The following and some future posts will cover highlights from the journal I kept during the trip.

Tuesday, July 5, 1988: Nikki and I are sharing a room in Rarotonga before catching the cargo plane to Atiu with the other volunteers. The weather is cool, overcast, and windy. Our back window looks out on jungle and our front window on the ocean, framed by coconut palm trees, hibiscus, orchids, and bougainvillea.

Dr. Sinoto and Dr. Stephenson

Our expedition leaders Dr. Rebecca A. (Becky) Stephenson, Dr. Hiro Kurashina, and the senior investigator, Dr. Yosi Sinoto held a press conference this morning describing our goals -- to trace the route of Polynesian colonization through archeological artifacts and to observe changes in island culture by comparing our journals to similar information collected by Becky in her year on the island for her doctoral study a decade ago.

At lunch today we were told the difficulty of Earthwatch trips varies a great deal. One woman, on her eighth expedition, said the Borneo trip was the toughest. At times they tracked the orangutans through waist-deep swamp water and afterwards had to pull leeches off each other. Because they moved from place to place, their camp sites and facilities were temporary. At one site, the team leaders were concerned about a wild boar in the area. So their night visits to the latrine -- a wooden plank over a large hole -- required balancing on the plank while holding a flashlight and a club.

Nikki left front, Mary middle front

In contrast, we look forward to a welcome from friendly and loving islanders. Two members of our group have been to Atiu with Earthwatch before. Both are back because they became so attached to their hosts. Each of us will live with a family for two weeks, and those two will stay with the same families as before.

At today's briefing we learned that Maori is a directive language. Technically, "please" and "thank you" do not exist, so we shouldn't be surprised if told "Do this!" Reciprocity is integral to this culture. If you admire something, an Atiuan will feel obligated to give it to you. The same goes for us -- we'll know what gifts to give members of our families by what they admire among our possessions. The Maori have a saying that things "get legs." The children will be curious about jewelry, or small alarm clocks, or watches. If we leave such things lying around, they might disappear.

Because we're guests, we will probably eat alone until our families get to know us, and we will eat with our hands, as they do. Shoes are not worn in the house. Both men and women are affectionate and will hug and kiss on the cheek. When attending the dances, a tap on the knee by a man will be an invitation to dance. After the dance a tap on the rear end will be an unspoken "Thank you."

There will be a conspicuous display of food, and we'll show our pleasure by eating a lot, though not necessarily everything. We asked a man who was here last year what that really means. He said, "It means six meals a day."

(continued in Unfamiliar Territory)

Eeek Love

Take a close look: Cathie Jung's waist is a Guinness-record-holding 15 inches. For more than 25 years she's been tight-lacing—corseting, waist training. Why am I fascinated by this centuries-old practice? No, not because my own waist has added all the inches missing from this photo.

My passion for the skewed, the avant-garde, the idiosyncratic, or just plain contrary—my admiration for poets, writers, artists, visionaries, whistle blowers, and everyday goddesses—stems from a childhood trapped in the mind and body of  a Margaret O'Brien prototype.

Behind the pigtails I was a voyeur of the sensational. Even more bewitching to me than Grimms' capricious and sometimes cruel fairy tales was Hans Christian Andersen's story of a nice little girl who was given a pair of coveted red shoes. The shoes made her want to dance everywhere—even to church, which was forbidden—and as punishment she could not remove them. The only way to stop the dancing was to have her feet cut off. Champion of that little girl, I have danced life-long with the forbidden. 

Would this explain my odd lot of friends—each of them rare, remarkable, eccentric? Hell for me would be to live in a planned community where all shopping and entertainment are accessible by golf cart, an adult Disney World with smartly dressed Stepford People. They exist, of course, but none of my fantastics would consider living there. 

Mrs. Jung is not the only object of my affection. As a young teenager living in Arlington, Virginia, my favorite outing was to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., where I could gaze upon bottled congenital abnormalities, plastic models of malaria parasites, tracings of the world's largest foot.

I was stunned and delighted to read Katharine Dunn's Geek Love, about a couple who revive their traveling carnival by breeding their own freak show, fetuses altered in utero by various means to create a boy with flippers for hands and feet, Siamese twins, a hunchbacked albino dwarf, a normal-looking baby gifted with telekinesis.

At the top of my list of intriguing movies is I Spit on Your Grave, summarily dismissed as a "rape revenge film." I love its over-the-top story of a woman raped and left for dead who survives and exacts a fitting end for each of her rapists, one by one. It could be a nightmare, or a dream.

My favorite photographer? Diane Arbus, also drawn to the off-beat, the exceptional. Her photos of marginal people—dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus performers, anyone whose normality seems surreal—show everyone unmasked. "There's a quality of legend about freaks," she wrote. "Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle."

The stages of my own life could be summed as a trip through the traveling show, my series of husbands and lovers—they of all ethnic groups, abnormalities of spirit, and size—having found me caged in various guises. I have emerged finally as a tattooed Eve unburdened by Adam.

(See companion "Side Show" poem)

Graduate School Jitters, 1975

I cannot breathe. Strangling, my words sound like alien croaks. My heart hums like a didgeridoo, a sound split from its source. There is no ground beneath me, I  am floating above myself and at the same time sinking.

I want to die. Now.

The professor clears his throat, praises my paper as the best one, trying to help. This does not help.

I've never before shared my opinion in public. I'm the only cross-over from sociology in the graduate psychology class, standing in front, facing everyone.

The professor coughs politely. The other grad students whisper, shuffle their feet.  

How awful. They pity me.

I wish for the ultimate act of kindness, a lightning strike. I think this is the most humiliating moment of my life, not knowing yet there will be other, greater embarrassments, until I find my voice.

Cock-Eyed Clichés

My ex-husband Dick called his badboy a dick. Did he think of it as a mini-me? Or was this meant to preempt jokes about his name?

We met sitting next to each other in the front row at one of those personal growth workshops where you're supposed to admit you're shit and always have been. We'd been there nine hours. I was desperate to leave, when the workshop leader announced a new theme: You're all story-ing. Starting with our row, he glanced one by one at name tags, saying You're Larry Larry-ing... You're Darlene Darlene-ing...

Dick and I made eye contact and grinned, but of course the guy paused and skipped past "Dick Dick-ing," responding to his own story, no doubt.

Most men name their dongs. My pal Art called his King Arthur. Trust me, that was a bit grandiose.

I decided to call my own parts Star. I wish I could say this has a scientific basis—hot, dense, luminous—but I took it from Tarot: "Star, the card of hope."

Then I met Roger, who has an Oscar.

My sex life was becoming a cliché!

Seeking a fresh perspective, I took charge of the naming. Thus, when I laid eyes on a most remarkable member, I christened it The Cobra. You can see it: the wider head when erect, the way it weaves and dances in a Stevie Wonder sort of way, like it's blind and sweet on Motown.

Blueprint For the Nation

My cousin Frank ran for U.S. president in the last election, choosing Dr. Bull Eagle as his public persona. I could stop right here and say "Another crackpot campaign!"

However, he earned the doctorate, and what if all political candidates took an Indian name? Couldn't we more easily decide between Talks As He Walks and Soaring Turkey Vulture?

If only America had known the previous incumbent as Misses with Arrows before votes were cast.

Dr. Eagle listed his publications among his political credentials. How Words Are a Limited Reflection of Reality is both a scholarly treatment of the arbitrariness of symbols and a poignant reflection of Bull Eagle's difficulty describing his eccentric world.

And I was assured of his executive savvy knowing he'd closely studied Labor/Management Relations in Yugoslavia.

I wondered, though, how on earth "Energy Artichokes and Energy Tongues" could be anything but the title to a poem.

Then I read the article, and understood it as a promise to support sustainable energy sources, including the too often overlooked Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus): "superior in yield of carbohydrates per unit area; a quality raw material for the production of ethanol."

Doctor      Bull        Eagle.
Scientist   Farmer   Politician.

One Who Cries

Bread and Butter

Young couples used to say "Bread and Butter" if separated by an obstacle when walking together, to keep something from coming between them. This is based on the difficulty of separating butter from bread once spread. 

My mother, Ruth, still has an old-fashioned beaded bag my father, Clovis, gave her for high school graduation, and I'm struck by how like her it is: small, pretty, many colorful pieces forming the whole, smooth to the touch, easy to love. I imagine my father saw this instantly. They were fourteen years old when they met, and neither time nor distance ever separated them in spirit.

Ruth's father, Lake Starkey, was a physician, her mother, Mary Bosworth Starkey, a descendant of early English settlers. Clovis Ritter was the rough-cut son of immigrant German stock—his mother, Ida, a short, fat, bossy sort and his father, C.H., a tall, skinny, quiet man, her Jack Sprat counterpart.

I don't know my maternal grandparents' view of this bright,  farm-grown young man, because they died in a car crash before I was born. I can guess they hoped their middle daughter would find a better catch if they moved her away from La Feria, Texas—population 1,594.

Ruth tried to follow her parents' wish that she go to college in Chicago, where her aunt and uncle lived. Once there, however, she schemed to move closer to Texas A & M, where Clovis was studying agriculture. She went to three different colleges in as many years and finally—after her third year away—they were married, with fifty dollars between them.

My father, enforcer of his own rules, scared me when I was growing up. Determined to have his way, he'd paint himself into a corner where to say yes would be to give in, a loss of face he couldn't tolerate.

Mom, though, saw through his tough exterior, and would act as go-between—babying me without challenging his decisions. She has never liked conflict. Even now, at age 97, when we're out together if I walk on the other side of a post in the sidewalk she'll say, "Bread and Butter!"

My parents were not without arguments, however.

I wear the same size shoe as Mom, and on one visit I brought her a pair of discount store stilettos, just for fun. She pranced around in them for Dad, expecting something flirty, I guess. Instead he gave her a dour look and said, "You're not going anywhere with me in those shoes."

Mom wept. I was furious. When she asked me what she could do, I said "LEAVE the son-of-a-bitch!"

That was out of the question, of course. Until he died at age 69, when I was visiting and came into a room where they were sitting, I'd find them whispering, Mom on Dad's lap, her arm protectively around him.

Mmmm Good

At our Gainesville Writers Alliance (yes, WAG) meeting last Sunday, Bev Browning talked to us about ghost-writing and her concept of shimmer — "how to craft a sentence to manipulate response and amplify meaning."

There's a huge difference between having a great story and being able to write it. The written words have to stand alone without the benefit of your gesture, facial expression, tone of voice, volume, eye contact, and feedback... "Shimmer" refers to the transparent layers that create subtle dimension in written work.

She said round words and mmmm sounds can create shimmer in a sensual experience, then handed out Belgian chocolates and asked us to add layers to this story:

Bev gave us chocolate. We ate it.

This is my shimmer:

She holds a chocolate
in blue and silver wrapper
close beneath my nose
and makes me wait
to open it or place
it in my mouth, but oh
I see it's round,
and notice first
its scent and then,
upon my tongue,
against the far back
of my throat,
how it softly,
slowly melts.

A humming starts
from somewhere
in my soul.

My Life is a Sitcom?

Last night I dreamed I'd been acting in a sitcom that had just been canceled and we were at a wrap party.

I was talking to a small, dark woman with long black hair, and wondered aloud if our Nielsen numbers were really bad enough to cancel us. Sure, some people out there found the show too edgy, but weren't there enough who appreciated our sophisticated humor to keep the sponsors happy?

She stepped back from me, eyes wide, and sobbed, "We're canceled, and you're talking about statistics?"

I called out the same question to a heavyset man about 6'4" with shaggy, long, gray hair and a deeply wrinkled face. 

He staggered a bit as he turned from shambling toward the door, looked back at me with his eyelids half closed, and slurred, "Mary, half the shows were crap."

"I know that," I persisted, closing in on him, "but the other half were prime." 

He put an arm around me and tried for a slobbery kiss. 

I slipped away.

Woman to Woman

Twice in my life a woman has phoned and started the conversation with "Woman to woman":

"Woman to woman, I know my husband's in love with you and I'm asking you not to respond to him if he calls or sends you an e-mail."

What she really meant: "Back off, BITCH!"

"Woman to woman, I have to tell you your husband has been hitting on me. I, of course, have not encouraged him and I'm here for you if you want to talk about what a loser he is, cheating on you that way."

What she really meant: "Give it up, STUPID, he's in love with me. Divorce him so I can have him."

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine

The first time I heard it, the murmur of muted cellos was sweet, haunting, the A minor chord augmented gradually by other strings, the chanting chorus. When the music shifted to A major, my eyes brimmed with the lyrical expansion of violins and voices. I was another instrument being mysteriously collected, gently hammered, my body resonating. 

Verdi's Requiem. 

I begged my friend Donna that night, "Please, if you survive me, play this at my funeral."

Kyrie eleison.

Then my son called, his voice choked, to tell me his dad — my ex-husband Dave — had died suddenly at age fifty of an apparent heart attack. I called in my Frequent Flyer miles to jet to Clearwater, Florida, and packed a cassette recording of the Requiem.

Lord have mercy on us.

The plane was late and I arrived only minutes before the service was to start. My son and daughter had left the music up to the funeral director, who was not pleased with my insistence on Verdi.

Lacrymosa dies illa.

The scene: an unctuous mortician who speaks too softly and keeps his hands folded in front at all times, a funeral parlor filled with the sickening, overpowering scent of flowers, the deceased in the open casket resembling someone we used to know but waxy and strangely colored. Dear God, they've gotten his nose wrong. It's much bigger than I remember. 

Ah, that day of tears and mourning.

I learned that funeral music is meant to be white noise, to keep people hushed, emotions tethered, everyone miming the embalmer, eyes down, looking properly respectful. The Verdi was a mistake, an intrusion, far too beautiful, drawing our attention away from memories of a life. But it was too late, the service had started. The Requiem's urgent soprano and eerie choral murmurs seemed to admonish me for this choice, for all my choices.

Libera me, Domine.

Relentlessly the music soared, competing with the low murmurs, barely perceptible, discordant notes: "Was it really his heart?" "Why no autopsy?" "They say it might have been suicide."

Deliver me, O Lord.

Scarab

I've been distressed how frequently The Writer's Almanac features crappy poetry. While digesting this, I came across "The Philosophy of Shit" (Taoism: shit happens; Zen Buddhism: shit is, and is not; Hinduism: this shit has happened before, etc).

Of course, manure is necessary in the life cycle and dung beetles play a large part, as they roll animal waste away and bury brood balls to feed their young.

In ancient Egypt this was symbolized by the Beetle God Khepri, who was believed to roll the sun across the sky. Scarab amulets were placed on mummy hearts to profess them so unburdened of sin and corruption they would balance against truth's feather and enjoy the eternal afterlife.

This is my own brood ball.

Scarab

The beetle god of ancient Egypt
rolled the sun across the sky,
his sacred efforts so eternal
Scarab amulets bode immortality:

a mythic mirroring of earthly work.

Scarabaeidae form balls
of excrement to eat or roll
home for their brood
and fecundate the land.

Are writers not the same?
Scriveners Scarabaeidaeus
feed on cherished forms of ordure
(some, particular, seek carrion),

and sweat, struggle, bury crap
to keep it moist and brood upon,
fertilize each year
a ton of reader nutrients.

Conversation with a Ghost

Dear Dave,

You, more than anyone, might find it strange that I write to you on Valentine's Day. You might even be amused.

I was frightened by your conviction that death is the end of everything, and amazed by your equanimity. You said it was simply the nature of things —  to come into being, to age, to die — and you wouldn't want to live in a world without death. You thought something would be missing, a lack of drive to morality, perhaps, or insufficient passion to do what we believe we're here to do.

Yet you did everything your medical training suggested could keep you alive and in good health, paying rigorous attention to what you ate, playing racquetball, as though your body protested your concept of death and feared you would, as you did, die young.

We'd been divorced more than fifteen years when Dylan called to say you'd had a heart attack. I thought of you by then as an occasional friend or interested party when issues with the children arose. So I was surprised how much I grieved.

John Updike died recently and I wept over his death, too, even though — of course — I didn't know him. Through these many years I continued to read Updike's own progress through life, his fiction drawing, I felt sure, from experiences much like mine.

The phrase from one of his Rabbit books I remember most clearly is this: "In a hundred years we'll all be grass."

If that's what you have become, Dave, I see you as reed grass, tall, lean, somewhat spare.

Love, Mary

French Lesson

Mallarmé, he writes, sought
nothingness that is truth.

Then translate this, I beg,
of his magicienne:

Une voix, du passé longue évocation,
Est-ce la mienne prête à l’incantation?

The hand, he scribes,
is quicker than the eye.

More charming, say I,
and now must bid good-bye.

From de Montaigne,
sixteenth century:

Une personne vous manqué

Et le monde est dépeuplé.

A person lacks you and
the world depopulates?

When you miss someone,
the world is a smaller place.

Moving Hearts

Dick and David Monaghan and I arrived at Kennedy Airport around 4:00 pm on Friday, May 9, 1986 and rode by bus to the Aer Lingus terminal, excited about our ten-day trip to Ireland. Their dad Charlie hadn't arrived yet, so the three of us offered our tickets and passports, planning to reserve a place for Charlie next to us. That's when we discovered Dick had brought his old passport.

Mr. Fitzgerald, at the counter, was not encouraging. I said surely there must be a circumstance where one could travel without an updated passport. He insisted it was rare, "only in the case of medical emergency." The three of us quietly conferred, phoned the State Department minutes before its offices closed, and a Mrs. Finn arranged for Dick to fly on a waiver "to meet his sick father who was in Ireland visiting relatives."

We clued Charlie in when he arrived, and left New York around 8:00 that night, arriving in Shannon at 8:00 am Saturday (a five-hour time change). As we passed through customs it occurred to Dick that his father was right behind him, so he told the customs officer it was his aunt in Carlow who was sick!

I have many precious memories of traveling through Ireland with the three Monaghan men, and will tell a few tales, not necessarily in order.

The wind and rain were increasing as we made our way to the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. As described in the guidebook: "Situated 9 km. NW of Lahinch, the Cliffs stretch for nearly 6 km. from Hags Head to O'Brien's Tower where they attain a height of over 100 m." We made our way against 80 mph winds to these magnificent cliffs.

We stayed at small Bed and Breakfasts as we toured through Ireland, a wonderful way to experience the local culture. Here's what I wrote on Thursday, May 15: "The weather turned quite cold today. We had to ask our host to warm the room where we were having breakfast, though our meals are so silly it's a wonder we noticed the temperature. This morning Charlie recited a poem:

"I eat my peas with honey,
I've done so all my life.
It makes them taste quite funny,
but they stick well on my knife."

On one of our last nights in Ireland Dick and I went to a pub, and I had one of those astonishing moments — totally unexpected — when your heart is moved by utter and complete joy: we heard an Irish group performing, featuring what sounded like jazzed-up bagpipes, a haunting combination of traditional Irish and rock music. The group's name, appropriately, was Moving Hearts.

I found two of their cassettes before we left Ireland, which brought me great pleasure over the years and, more recently, tried to find CDs but Moving Hearts had disappeared. To my delight, they've resurfaced.

Three Wishes

When I was fifteen, the only thing I ever wanted was to have a shape like Marilyn Monroe.

That's a lie. I also wanted to have perfect eyesight and curly hair.

But I was a late bloomer and Twiggy hadn't yet come on the scene. My skinny torso was a particular embarrassment.

However, there was a solution: padding my bra. Who would know? I didn't go crazy with this, just a small improvement. And that was working for me. I joined the cheerleading team. I was offered a part in the drama club production.

Then one day, without warning, the school secretary announced over the loudspeaker that there would be mandatory chest x-rays in a special bus parked in the school lot. They were starting with ninth graders. My class would be next.

I was afraid my Monroe breasts would show up in the x-ray and somehow the whole school would find out and make a joke of it. Slipping into the girl's bathroom, I looked around, frantic. All the stalls were occupied. I grabbed a fake boob in each hand and pushed both of them behind the paper towel dispenser, racing out the door as tenth graders were called outside.

When I came back from the bus two boys and a girl were playing catch in the hallway. I walked past them, heading for the bathroom, then looked again. They were tossing my falsies!

The Talking Cure

i

Mary, have you read about
The Talking Cure? Speilrein?

Jung's decoding her hysteria?

I know of May's "psychotic
bundle of tics" on stage.
I feel decoded.

Do you find me crazy?

Dear, I find you half crazy,
like Leonard Cohen's Suzanne.

ii

You are my Animus.
Or is that Anima?

Mistaking Anima and Animus,
dear Mary, is like screwing
with your Incubus and Succubus.

But unlike real-life lovers,
Incubus and Succubus
do not complain about the cooking -

for one always serves
their favorite dish: you!

(though they may fret,
if sleeplessness sets in,
that dinner's late).

Your angle on gastronomy's sublime.
My screaming soundtrack fades in
with a tight and faultless beat:
"Good God! A snack attack."

...

Walking Meditation

"Om mani padme hum. This will bring the powerful, benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig," hums the teacher, "the embodiment of compassion."

I've been sitting on a prayer cushion for twenty minutes, eyes closed, feet tucked under my hips. Damn, my knees hurt! Please God, Buddha, all the gods, give me a break. The teacher rings the bell. I gratefully rise. Moving too fast. Follow his example and slow down, bow to the room, fingertips pointed beneath chin, backing out the door.

We are to clasp our hands waist-high, slip on our shoes outside the door, walk slowly, in rhythm, behind him.

"Om Namo Narayanaya," he chants, "releasing us from bondage to lower consciousness."

The woman in front of me stops at a bench to tie her lace-up sneakers, then steps back into the moving line.

"You're out of order," the teacher snaps. "If you don't walk in the same line as you were sitting, you'll screw things up!"

Om mani padme om, I mutter, and keep walking, all the way to my car.

Scissors, Paper, Stoned

Sitting on the floor in a half-lotus position impossible when sober, guitar in lap. A faculty-student party, so I am surprised to be handed a joint.

A shared high, grad students smokily aware of our theses waiting on our desks, some neatly ordered and half started, some only loose papers thrown about in piles.

I sing in a reedy voice. Everyone smiles.

I remember this when sitting in the chair for my oral defense, legs scissored, paper ready, fearing I'll be stoned.

Chartreuse

Envy consumed me whenever I looked at Grace. I had to practice being cool, but Gracie just did it.

I was fourteen years old and couldn't believe my luck when she admired the chartreuse sateen jacket I'd bought with babysitting money. This was before I decided synthetics were pseudo. I kept caressing the silky fabric, admiring myself in store windows. I knew the color was awful, close to neon, but it was "in." Either this or hurt-your-teeth fuchsia. I liked the Frenchy sound of the lustrous green: shartrooz.

Gracie liked the color, too, and I let her borrow the jacket. She told me later that was the first time she even noticed me, wearing something like that. I didn't care if I ever got it back.

Gracie's mother Millie was a drinker. You could count on Millie (we weren't allowed to call her "Mom" or "Mrs. H") to be out at a bar with someone when I stayed overnight. So we could come and go as we pleased.

My mother would have died. Not that she trusted Millie as a chaperone. But Mom trusted me. Whereas I was just itching to do something even a little bit bad.

One Friday night Gracie and I went to the movies and missed the last bus to her house. We knew better than to try to rouse Millie. They lived only a couple of miles from town, so we decided to walk. It was pitch dark. I was wearing the jacket and walked on the outside so any car's headlights would reflect off the chartreuse and we wouldn't be run down. What we didn't count on was the gang of boys on motorcycles who whizzed by, whistling. We were flattered at first, proud we came off as women in the dark. Then we saw the boys stop about a half-mile ahead.

"What if they come back?" I ventured.

"They'd attack us," Gracie assured me, high on the adventure of it.

We looked around for an escape route, realized we were surrounded on both sides by fields of corn with seven-foot stalks. We both jumped at once, first into the ditch and then scrambling on our hands and knees as far into the field as we could before we heard the roar of engines draw close. We sat silently for what seemed like hours, long past the time they gave up and drove off.

Then Gracie started giggling. "I was so scared I wet my pants!"

"Me, too!" I snorted, blissful tears dripping on our jacket.

Water Messages

He sips water from my glass, this creature whose semantics I understand, laps so quietly I must nuzzle him to hear. When thirsty, he listens, holds his nose just above the surface of his own bowl, interprets it as if he'd studied Emoto's Hidden Messages in Water, though of course it does not speak to him of Chuzenji Lake springs.

But my water. Ah! He eyes it dripping slowly from my bathroom faucet, waits for my act of devotion: to see his longing, lift him gently where his arthritic limbs can no longer jump, and wait Zen-like while he drinks.

We have created a language where intonation is everything. My voice rises, rings like a temple bell; I call him mameki-neko. He has learned to mimic with a chirp: "You are my goddess of happiness, my Kissyoten" I imagine he is saying.

He beckons with his moonstone eyes, moves toward the bed. This is the syntax of our relationship: in his sleep the soft fricatives of his snores punctuate my dreams. If he dozes on the couch, I am restless until he jumps up next to my pillow.

I consider catelepathy.

I spoon with him, hold my hand around his belly. When he awakens, he rolls onto his back, eyes darkened, paws folded as in prayer, inviting my cheek to rest on his head, his purrs matched by my own.

The Night I Quit Being Saved

Mama was a Methodist and Daddy was a Baptist but he never went to church. He went fishing on Sundays for the big old catfish Mama would roll in cornmeal and fry in bacon grease the way he liked it, but then she wouldn't eat it and neither would I. Mama had me baptized a Methodist.

I was real serious about church. I liked to listen to myself sing the hymns and then I wondered if that was sinful, if it was bad to love singing and especially the sound of my own voice, but I knew Jesus loved me because the Bible told me so.

My friend Bobbie Sue was a Baptist, so when I slept over at her house I kept my ears peeled, hoping I'd learn something about Daddy. There I was at dinner with Bobbie Sue and her older brothers and her parents, and they started talking about how the Lord had directed their missionaries to Africa to build Christ's church and save all the Poor Savages there. I knew something was fishy because they weren't wishing just to heap blessings on those Poor Souls. They told me flat-footed that anyone who dies without being saved goes straight to Hell.

That kind of took away my appetite. After dinner Bobbie Sue and I played paper dolls with my Lucille Ball set and I let her pick out Lucy's outfits but my heart wasn't in it, still thinking about those Poor Slaves to Idolatry and how I just could not believe so many people were going to Hell without the Baptists. But Bobbie Sue's brown hair was thick and soft and naturally curly and that's where I fixed my thoughts. How could she be so pretty and still be so wrong?

We slept together in Bobbie Sue's bed and the next morning she asked did I remember what I did. I said what do you mean and she said you kept stroking my hair and talking in your sleep, mumbling poor soul, poor soul. I guess I knew who needed saving.

Heads Up

I don't know where my head is today. If I had it on straight I'd be writing something inspirational like Kitchen Table Wisdom. Instead, I think of death, depression, sex - not necessarily in that order.

When I say my second husband was Mr. Potato Head to me, I mean that in the most loving way. Dick is a gruff man with a surprisingly simple sense of humor, the kind of guy who considers The Duct Tape Book a perfect gift.

His granddaughter gave him the original Mr. Potato Head one year for Christmas and he made such a fuss over it, the top of our bedroom armoire was gradually filled with a Tuber Town community.

Mrs. Potato Head was there, of course, and the usual combination of parts. With our divorce, I barely escaped the upward marketing trend in Potato Heads. Otherwise I might have found more of them looking down on me — Pirate Potato Head, Trick or Tater, Spud Bunny, and my favorite: Darth Tater.

What about my first husband, you ask? A talking head. To be more exact, Dave was a headshrinker. Psychiatry was not, in those days, so far removed from the original practice perfected by clans in the Amazon river basin, where shrinking heads had religious significance. With modern shrinks, harnessing the spirit of the enemy became harnessing the energies of the id. I tried it myself, when our marriage was dying. After nine months of therapy it suddenly dawned on me that I had my head up my ass.

The only other arena where "head" comes to mind would bring me full circle: death, depression, sex. Maybe next time.